Chips On the Brain
Source: San Francisco Gate
September 14, 2000
Our Brains, Our Selves
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of monthly
columns on humans and technology appearing in SF Gate Technology.
The truth is, we like ourselves.
When a rumor began some years ago suggesting that we use
only 10 percent of our brain, we were flattered but not surprised.
Secretly, we had always known that we were special -- in
a way that wasn't reflected by the crude sum of our accomplishments.
And if we didn't always act like geniuses -- if we
tended to lose our wallets, confuse simple sentences, and watch too
much TV -- well, that was OK, because we knew in our hearts that we
could be extraordinary, if only our potential were unlocked.
But over the years, fussy debunkers have picked away at
the 10 Percent Myth, pointing out a variety of inconsistencies.
They've noted, for instance, that the 10 percent statistic appears in
no neurology research papers.
That evolutionarily, it's unlikely that an animal would
develop an enormous brain and then use a tiny fraction of it. That
unused portions of a brain would degenerate, the way muscles atrophy
from disuse.
And lastly, crushingly, that newer brain imaging
machines reveal us using not 10 percent, not 40 percent, but all of
our brain (though not all at one time, except perhaps when we're a
having a seizure).
The upshot is that we now risk sinking back into the
muck of our ordinariness. Can it be that, when we find ourselves
struggling to assemble our new computer, we have truly hit the wall of
our mental ability?
Fortunately for our sense of ourselves, a newly
optimistic discovery has recently surfaced in the pages of
forward-looking books and magazines. What glitters now is
human-computer potential: our brains, spiked with tiny electronic
processors, can be upgraded.
Indeed, scientists in Southern California have already
succeeded in making cultured brain cells grow on coated or charged
pieces of silicon -- evidence that all manner of neat stuff -- eidetic
memory, brainware TurboTax -- is just around the corner.
To read it feels like destiny. The futurist Raymond
Kurzweil has predicted that by 2029, "widely available neural
implants...will enhance visual and auditory perception, memory and
reasoning...significantly altering the concept of what it is to be
human."
We will see in infrared, and hear like dogs. An
implanted chip may even act like a clever conversational partner, an
improved version of our current tendency to talk to ourselves.
It's a plausible trajectory, at least to those of us who
don't bother with the details. If there's one thing the computer
revolution has convinced us of, it's the inevitable and rapid march of
progress -- a Moore's Law pace that we believe holds true not just for
microprocessors but for frumpy old
biological operating systems as well.
But biological systems are complicated. Although they
work exquisitely well, they're also temperamental, kludgy, and subject
to mysterious permutations.
It has taken neurobiologists 20 years to develop what is
currently the crowning success in the field: a hearing aid that
bypasses an ear's damaged hair cells and transmits sound, converted to
electromagnetic pulses, directly into the cochlea.
But like retinal implants -- the so-far-unsuccessful
attempts to make the blind see -- cochlear implants are downstream
tinkering: They use existing nerve bundles to reach the brain, rather
than connecting to the brain directly.
True neuron-silicon interfaces remain rare and, well,
crude. So far, a handful of companies have prototyped brain
"pacemakers" intended to pre-empt epileptic seizures -- though with
uneven success. (An implanted electrode that stops the tremors from
Parkinson's works better.)
Likewise, a scientist at Emory University has managed to
use brain waves (measured by electrodes taped to the scalp and
"focused" by the subject) to direct an arrow around a computer screen.
But brain waves are weak, and the process slow -- it
would take hours to type a sentence. While useful to a paralyzed
patient, it's still a long way from helping the rest of us square
large numbers.
It's also a long way from much more modest goals.
Researchers at the University of Washington estimate that it will take
them a decade to implant tiny computer chips into the brain of a sea
slug, which will then be released to wander the ocean floor under
video surveillance.
When the slug moves forward, dozens of intracellular
electrodes will record its neural activity. When the slug stops, the
electrodes will record that, too.
When enough data have been collected, the scientists
will begin reverse-programming: feeding the recorded electrical
patterns back into the slug's brain. If all goes well, the slug will
go forward. (The military applications are staggering.)
But even robo-slug is, by the scientists' estimate, a
decade away from reality, leaving us even less time to get our human
brains online on schedule.
Roberta Brinton, a professor of molecular pharmacology
at the University of Southern California's Center for Neural
Engineering, admits that she doesn't see it happening soon.
"There are all kinds of challenges we have yet to face
for implantation," she says carefully. "We need to get the surviving
neurons" -- in a stroke patient, for example -- "to choose to
interface with a silicon chip -- to actually set up a synapse with the
chip -- rather than allowing the brain's
compensatory healing processes to take over. That's a big one. Another
is making the interface stable, so that walking around or nodding
doesn't disrupt the connection."
Dr. Gerald Loeb, director of the Medical Devices
Development Lab at USC, adds, "Look: it took us 20 years to get
cochlear implants working, and that's a fairly straightforward
application. Changing how we learn, remember, process information --
that's so far out it's still science fiction."
Not that the naysaying of actual neurologists matters
much, in the end. Our longing to be plucked clean from the realm of
the middlingly bright and deposited into the realm of genius is
unshakeable, and wishfulness has already proven able to trump mere
fact.
And so, while researchers spend nights in the lab fusing
rat brain cells onto plastic, we sit home, unable to rouse ourselves
to do the shopping, much less to learn French or read Faulkner.
That's OK, however, because in our hearts we know that
our potential is infinite -- if only we can figure out how to tap into
it.
by Jennifer Kahn
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/bios/
Despite The Data, We Know Our Potential Is Unlimited